signs of life ~ all photos (embiggenable)
IN MY LAST ENTRY I WROTE ABOUT WHAT CONSTITUTES A righteous photo blog. It was mentioned that blogs which feature only photographs are #1 in my book. Although, a few well written words about the medium and/or the vision which drove the creation of those photographs can add a bit of context to the pictures. Given those druthers, I find that are quite a few of the former but precious few of the latter.
iMo, backed up by my experience, the primary reason there are only a precious few photo blogs with well written words about artist’s vision (or the medium in general) is that writing about photography-driven vision is not a topic that those who have it are inclined to make an attempt to explain it. As Robert Adams wrote:
“Photographers are like other artists too in being reticent because they are afraid that self-analysis will get in the way of making more art. They never fully know how they got the good pictures that they have, but they suspect that a certain innocence may have been necessary…The main reason that artists don’t willingly describe or explain what they produce is...that the minute they do so they’ve admitted that failure. Words are proof that the vision that they had is not…fully there in the picture. Characterizing in words what they thought they had shown is an acknowledgement that the photograph is unclear-that it is not art.” from Why People Photograph
ASIDE It should go without saying writing, that one of my favorite righteous photo blogs is lifesquared.squarespace.com. I really appreciate the manner in which the author writes about photography in general without writing specifically about his pictures. Although some might suggest that that is just a sneaky cheat to imply that what he writes is actually about what he is attempting to do in his personal picture making. I guess the same could be suggested about the many quotes he presents from from photographers and photo critics; that those quotes tend to have the same end-aka: pov about the medium-as his. Be that as it may, at the very least he never tries to explain his pictures. END OF ASIDE
I believe that a perfect example of “admitting failure” can be found in the writing that accompanies every photo body of work created by the Academic Lunatic Fringe crowd. I have yet to view a single ALF picture which visually coveys the meaning ascribed to it by the psycho-social-scientific balloon bread writing that accompanies it.
While there is, some might say, an excessively staggering “wealth” of writing about photography out there, it is my experience that there is very little of it that does not end up making the picture(s) smaller, less complex, less resonant, depleted, and impoverished. In fact, it seems that it is quite difficult to write something about photography that does not get in the way of the pictures.
In any event, the key to good writing about photography, especially by photographers themselves, could be explained in words by the poet X. J. Kennedy:
The goose that laid the golden egg
Died looking up its crotch
To find out how its sphincter worked
Would you lay well? Don’t watch